Religion is a completely different thing from the claim that the Earth is six thousand years old. That's just crazy.

Millennial voters are very concerned about climate change and will vote for candidates who are planning to address it. But the systems that are in place - people talk about gerrymandering and the money that's in politics, this is a real thing, a real effect - and it's hard for climate change-denying legislators to get voted out. But I predict it will happen.

I'll admit that the discovery of evolution is humbling, but it is also empowering. It transforms our relationship to the life around us. Instead of being outsiders watching the natural world go by, we are insiders. We are part of the process; we are the exquisite result of billions of years of natural research and development.

If we raise a generation of students who dont believe in the process of science, who think everything that weve come to know about nature and the universe can be dismissed by a few sentences translated into English from some ancient text, youre not going to continue to innovate.

People get a lot out of being religious. They have strong senses of community and mutual support. So, what's not to love [there]?

Hard to find anything lovelier than a tree. They grow at right angles to a tangent of the nominal sphere of the Earth.

From an evolutionary standpoint you can't just wipe everything out and start over, and I don't think you can do it in the school system either.